


Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: A Sweet Retelling

by DanGuy96



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - All Media Types
Genre: Fan Retelling, Gen, patchwork fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 19:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11857794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanGuy96/pseuds/DanGuy96
Summary: A retelling of the classic Roald Dahl children's novel, taking elements from the different incarnations and adaptations from across the years, as well as elements which were scrapped from the original story, and combining them into a singular narrative. Re-experience the story of Charlie Bucket, and how he wins a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go on a tour of Mr. Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, where things aren't always as they seem.





	1. Prologue: A Message For Those Who Have Not Stopped Dreaming…

**Author's Note:**

> I finally decided to upload my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory retelling up here to Ao3 after having it be on Tumblr and deviantART for a while. 
> 
> Consider this "prologue" to be a taste of things to come (sort of like the preface to the 1939 Wizard of Oz film, or, for people who like really obscure references, the preamble to Jean Cocteau's 1949 version of Beauty and the Beast), and I hope some of you are fans of the story will be able to pick the little shout-outs and references to the other adaptations of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory I put in this (I also hope you'll be able to catch the references and shout-out to the others versions throughout this fic).
> 
> I hope you all like it, and I'll be sure to upload the first actual chapter as soon as I can.
> 
> I do not own any of the characters which will appear in this story, and they all belong to their respective owners, and make sure to support the official release.
> 
> Finally, I would like to thank EBraunstein, EmptyTome, Jimmy-C-Lombardo, mask131, and hawhawhaw24/Jamesandtheblog for all being a giant help and inspiration for me with this entire project. Thank you.
> 
> Enjoy!

  This is a story which you’ve probably heard before, in some way, shape, or form, and chances are likely that you will one day hear it again, in yet another way, shape, or form. Nevertheless, no matter how familiar with this tale you may be, you will see that while this story may feel familiar, it also may make you feel like this is a brand new story you are discovering for the very first time.  
   
   In order to truly appreciate this tale, you must surrender at least just some part of that cynical side of ourselves which grows larger and larger as we grow older, and try to rediscover some of that innocence, wonder, and pure imagination which at least most of us surely had as a child.   
   
   Imagine a world where some of the most wildest dreams and fantasies can become a reality.   
   
   Imagine a world where a splendid mix of mind, machine, and even some magic can create inventions beyond the mere understanding of human comprehension.   
   
   Imagine a world where those who have enough kindness in their hearts and enough imagination in their minds are rewarded for the seemingly smallest kind deed, but also a world where those who are filled with bitterness, greed, arrogance, and selfishness are shown little mercy.  
   
   Imagine a world where even the most down-on-their-luck and unlikely person can have their entire life turned around in a mere instant, thanks to a bit of hope, luck, and a bit of magic.   
   
   Though, most of all, dear readers, I request that when you imagine these things, remember to imagine big, not small. Don’t think things on a small scale when it comes to this story, for only someone who is truly foolish (or just partially stupid, depending on how you view it) would try to apply such a minimal way of thinking when it comes to a tale of this stature. You must instead imagine many of the fantastical things which shall be described to you as being grandiose and larger than life, for only then shall you truly experience anything remarkable. Some of you may think that this may not be possible, and think that your imagination isn’t strong enough to do such a thing, but I say that if you try hard enough and concentrate, your imagination will sprout like a humble seed or bean, and become like a mighty, tall tree or stalk.  
   
   Just a little bit of this childlike innocence, sympathy, wonder, and dreaming is all I ask of you, my dear readers. However, it’s important to know that in order to truly experience this retelling of a truly unique modern fable, you must do more than simply imagine the events which are about to unfold. If only for a brief time while reading this story, you must believe in the wonder, as well as imagine it…  
  
_…For it must be believed to be seen._


	2. Chapter 1: Meet Charlie Bucket

    As you would have probably guessed by now, this is a story about an ordinary little boy named Charlie Bucket. Now, Charlie, at first glance, seemed like a typical, average young boy, and, for the most part you would be correct with that assumption. Charlie was not faster than any other child in the world, nor was he any stronger or wealthier than other children. However, what he lacked in those areas, he made up for with being a rather imaginative and clever young lad (well, as clever as a ten-year old boy could probably get, but still clever, nonetheless), and would often come up with ideas for stories and even inventions from time to time. Though, Charlie’s little habit of dreaming would occasionally slip into daydreaming, which got him into some scraps of trouble at school during his classes or when doing his homework (in fairness, his classes were usually  _very_ , very boring). Still, in spite of this, Charlie was still a good-hearted and charming boy, who would always give his finest “How d’you do?” to the people he’d meet.  
  
    The rest of his family consisted of his father, his mother, and his four grandparents. These four grandparents consisted of the father and mother of Mr. Bucket, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine, and the father and mother of Mrs. Bucket, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. Now, Grandpa Joe, though extremely old, was still a fun-loving man who just loved to tell fascinating stories from his youth, including his time doing service in the war (though, it was hard to tell when was telling the truth, or just telling tall tales, though it didn’t really matter to Charlie, since he loved Joe’s stories either way). Joe’s wife, in contrast, was a bit more down-to-earth than her husband, and usually liked to keep to her knitting and sewing (often knitting and sewing things for the rest of her family, especially for little Charlie, who needed the extra warmth for the winter most of all, due to him being prone to becoming sick during that time of the year), but she was probably the sweetest old grandmother you could possibly find. Grandpa George, on the other hand, was a somewhat curmudgeonly, old Irishman, who almost alway seemed to be grumbling about what was wrong with life and the world nowadays, and seemed to be waiting for the day when he would, as he put it, “finally get to meet the good Lord.” Grandma Georgina, a brash woman of advancing years from Scotland, had less of a “glass half-empty” outlook on life than her husband did, though she did have a habit of being, well, “inappropriate”, such as claiming that she could show attractive young men that she’s “still got it” after downing more than quite a bit of gin (Charlie’s parents promised to tell Charlie just what sort of “it” Georgina had when he was older). Even in spite of their foibles, Charlie still loved his grandparents, and the same could most definitely be said about his own parents as well, even if they didn’t exactly live in the lap of luxury (an understatement, to be sure).  
      
    You see, the whole of this family lived in a small cottage on small hill near the edge of a small city in England (though, I couldn’t tell you which one, just that it was far away from the hustle and bustle of cities like London or Oxford), right next to a not-so-small Garbage Dump. The house wasn’t nearly large enough to accommodate all seven people, and, as you could probably imagine, life was extremely uncomfortable for them all. There were only six rooms in the place altogether (though, technically it was four rooms and a cellar, so it was even less than that); there was one “main room”, where all four of the grandparents slept in the same large bed on both sides (or, rather basically  _lived_  in the same large bed, since they hadn’t gotten out of it as far back as Charlie could remember, since all four were so old and had lost even the will to get out of the bed), one bedroom where Mr. and Mrs. Bucket slept, a kitchen (which just barely counted as a room, seeing as how it was practically right out in the open and almost right next to where the Grandparents slept), a room in the cellar where Mr. Bucket would occasionally tinker on home-made inventions of his, a bathroom, and one makeshift bedroom in the attic for little Charlie. Now, in the Summertime and in Spring, living conditions weren’t completely terrible, but in the Winter, freezing cold drafts would blow throughout the house and make the floor feel like ice if one walked on it without socks or slippers, which was just unbearable. There wasn’t any question of them just moving out and buying a better house, or even building a proper bedroom for Charlie. They were far too poor for any of that.

   Because they were so poor, both parents and even Charlie had to put in their fair share of work in order to make ends meet, with Charlie recently having taken up an evening newspaper route after school. As for Charlie’s parents, Mr. Bucket was the main breadwinner of the family, and worked at the local Smilex toothpaste factory, where he would sit all day screwing the caps onto toothpaste tubes after they had been filled. The hours were long and tedious, and the amount of money he was paid wasn’t nearly enough to help provide for his family, no matter how hard he worked or however fast he screwed the caps on. Mrs. Bucket would usually spend one half of the day taking care of the house and cooking for family, while spending the other half of the day working at an old laundromat, where she would wash and dry other people’s laundry in a very old-fashioned and tedious way (the town in which Charlie lived in was very old-fashioned as well, so having a washing machine and dryer, or even having a laundromat with those things, was quite the luxury). While she only had to work there every other day, the pay was no greater than the pay which Mr. Bucket earned, and she would sometimes even have to work there till late in the evening, even after Charlie got home from school.  
  
   At home, though, Mr. Bucket still did his best to keep a glass-half-full attitude, and tried his best to help the family by fashioning together some homemade contraptions together in order to make their lives a little easier (such as repairing an old vacuum cleaner he found thrown out in the dump, building a “work-in-progress” automatic woodcutting device in order to save time on chopping wood for the stove, repairing an old wireless radio set, and a “work-in-progress” shave and haircutting device, just to name a few, and to answer your question, the reason why he didn’t sell his inventions in the city is because they weren’t “new” and “up-to-date”), and he loved to play with his similarly imaginative son when he had the chance, even helping him build a small clubhouse in a tree that was just between Charlie’s house and the Dump, using mostly the debris that was left out near the house. Mrs. Bucket was more down-to-Earth and practical than her husband, rejecting some of her husband’s more ludicrous inventions in favor of using a bit of elbow grease around the house, and was the de facto enforcer of house rules, but she still loved her husband and her son dearly, even if there weren’t enough hours in the day for her to spend time with both of them.  
  
   Now, even though the Buckets were definitely poor, they could still afford some of the basic essentials: running water, electricity, and heating… though they would sometimes have trouble with the last one, and had to resort to wood and coal-powered stoves whenever Mr. Bucket had to fix the heater. The main problem they had was  _food_. Even with the combined pay of Mr. and Mrs. Bucket’s jobs, and Charlie’s paper route, all that they could afford were small loaves of bread with margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbages for lunch, and watery cabbage soup for supper. There were days when things were a bit better, and they were able to buy some things like lard, eggs, and some meat (particularly corned beef), but those days seemed to only come once or twice a month if they were lucky.  

   The Buckets didn’t starve, of course, but every one of them usually went from day to day with a devastatingly half-empty feeling in their stomachs, and just didn’t feel completely well-nourished after they ate. They all had dreams of one day being able to eat more scrumptious and satisfying meals, but Charlie was probably the one who suffered the most of all. Although his mother, father, and even his grandparents would usually do their best to give them some of their own share of lunch or supper to help him keep up his strength, it still usually wasn’t enough for a growing boy his age. Oh, how he desperately craved something more filling and satisfying than cabbage soup or boiled potatoes. But the thing he longed for and dreamed of eating more than anything else in the world was…  _CHOCOLATE_.  
  
   Walking his way to school in the mornings, Charlie would walk by the local sweet shop and see great slabs of chocolate piled up high in the shop windows, and he pause briefly to stop and stare and press his nose against the glass his mouth watering like mad dog. Several times a week, he would see other children taking creamy chocolate bars out from their pockets, lunch boxes, or backpacks and see them munching greedily into them without the slightest thought, and  _that,_ of course, was just  _pure_ ,  _absolute_  torture for the boy.

   Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste even the tiniest bit of chocolate. The whole family saved up their money for that special occasion, and when the great day arrived, Charlie was always presented with one small chocolate bar to eat all by himself. And each time he received his birthday bar, he would place it carefully in a particular place in the refrigerator, and treasure it as though it were a bar of the finest solid gold; and for the next few days, he would allow himself to only look at it, but never touch it. Then at last, when he couldn’t take it any longer, he would peel back at a  _tiny_  bit of the wrapper at one corner to expose a  _tiny_  bit of chocolate, and then he would take just a  _tiny_  bite of the sweet delicious bar, which he would savor just long enough to allow the taste to spread out slowly over his tongue. He would then take another tiny nibble the next day, and the day after that, and so forth and so on. In this way, Charlie would make his fifty-pence (sixty-five cents in American money, just to be clear for readers on both sides of the pond) bar of birthday chocolate last him for as long as he could mange.

   Ah, but dear readers, I have yet to tell you about the one awful thing that tortured Charlie, our dear, sweet lover of chocolate, more than anything else. For him, this was far, far worse than seeing slabs of chocolate in shop windows or watching other children mindlessly munching away at creamy candy bars right in front of him. It was the terribly torturing thing you could imagine. You see, dear readers, in the town itself which Charlie lived in, within sight of Charlie’s very own house, there was an  _ENORMOUS CHOCOLATE FACTORY!_

  Just imagine that!

   Oh, but this wasn’t simply any old ordinary chocolate factory, and it was owned by no ordinary, everyday man. It was the largest and most famous factory to ever produce chocolate, candies, and all manners of sweets and confectioneries in the entire world! It was the  _Wonka Chocolate Factory,_ ownedby none other than by a man known as  _Mr. Willy Wonka_ , the greatest, wealthiest, and most famed chocolatier and inventor of chocolates and other sweets the world has ever known! Very little was known about Mr. Wonka himself, but the stuff that was known about him was the stuff of legends, and his factory matched the enormity of the stories surrounding him. There were huge iron gates to the North, South, East, and West leading into it, and a high wall surrounding all four gates, and towering chimneys which belch out smoke, and one could even occasionally hear strange whizzing coming from deep inside the factory. In fact, it was so tremendous and breathtaking, that at times it felt a little intimidating, even scary, if you stood near it, what with the way it towered over the town and cast it’s massive shadow. However, you would immediately forget your worries as you stood outside the factory gates when you soon learned for yourself that outside the walls, for half a mile around in every direction, the air was scented by the heavenly rich smell of melting chocolate!

   Twice a day, on his way to school in the morning and his way home during his paper route, little Charlie Bucket had to walk right past the gates of Wonka’s factory. Every time he went by, he would walk as slow as he possibly could, and he would take long and deep sniffs and savored every bit of that chocolatey smell. Oh, how he loved that smell!

   Although he loved Willy Wonka for his chocolates (or, at least whatever little bit of chocolate of Wonka’s his family was able to afford for his birthday), Charlie also admired Mr. Wonka for the exciting, charismatic stories surrounding Mr. Wonka and his life (which Charlie just so happens to knows about, thanks to his Grandparents, particularly Grandpa Joe), as well as for his ingenuity and skills at being an inventor and innovator of all things related to chocolate. Such accomplishments of Wonka’s (mixed in with him taking after his father and grandfather when it came to imagination and a drive to create) soon led to young Charlie being inspired to hopefully become an inventor himself one day so that he could help his family, with dreams of even opening up his very own sweet shop.

   Until that day, though, he was just Charlie Bucket; a poor boy with not much to his name other than a paper route, a clubhouse he and his father built, a tendency to daydream, and small bit of optimism to help him get through life. Still, Charlie continued to hope, dream, and wish for things to get better for his family, even if things seemed almost hopeless at this point. But even though he loved his family very much, and would do anything in order to help them rise above their troubles, the one other thing he dreamed and wished for more than anything was to one day be able to go inside Wonka’s grand factory itself, just to satisfy his curiosity to see what it was like in there, and to finally meet Willy Wonka himself.

   However, dear readers, even though he didn’t exactly consider himself to be the lucky type, Charlie Bucket was the luckiest boy in the entire world, even if he didn’t know it yet, and little did he know that his wishes were soon to be granted in probably the most unlikely of ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the first proper chapter! Finished in all it's glory!
> 
> As you may pick up, I do sort of borrow heavily from Dahl’s original text (much like mask131 did), but I also changed things up a bit to give a bit more depth to Charlie’s family as I set them up for the story proper. While this is mostly just set-up, I still felt it was important to do this sort of thing, much like how Dahl would usually spend a chapter or two setting up the story and characters. And I probably may continue to borrow a bit from the original text, but I do promise you that I try to make this story it’s own thing with my own takes on certain bits of dialogue, even if a few elements from other adaptation of this story will eventually make their way into this retelling. Speaking of which, I hope you picked up on any references or nods to other adaptations of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as well as a few shout-outs from other certain stories as well.  
> I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you also share your thoughts on it with me.
> 
> Next time, we get into the story proper, so be sure to stick for when it finally comes out.
> 
> Again, I do not own any of these characters, and please support the official release.
> 
> I would also like to once again like to thank mask131, TheVideoNasty, EBraunstein, EmptyTome, Jimmy-C-Lombardo, and hawhawhaw24/Jamesandtheblog for all being such a big help and inspiration for me with this entire project.


End file.
